Title game will lose some luster after regular season battles

STORRS -- If the Tennessee women don't want to play the University of Connecticut twice during the regular season, maybe the Houston Comets have an open date.

Dave Solomon

Published
12:00 am EST, Sunday, December 31, 2000

Short of Cynthia Cooper -- two-time WNBA Most Valuable Player with the Comets -- coming out from behind the CBS mike Saturday to don an orange uniform, the Huskies have neither a peer nor bona fide challenger for a second straight NCAA championship.

The closeness of the final score, 81-76, was somewhat cosmetic, in that UConn got up by 17 points with 5 minutes, 20 seconds left in the first half and got almost giddy, or bored, or simply drifted mentally. And to the Volunteers' enduring credit, they played with a sense of desperation that seemed to vanish from UConn's game with the huge first-half lead.

"I won't say giddy, but it was almost like you could see the wind go out ... almost like 'phew, oh good, we're up 15,' " UConn associate head coach Chris Dailey said. "I don't know how to describe it, other than to say you could see it and it wasn't just one person. It just seemed like almost a collective sigh. Not that they can't beat us, but not necessarily with the killer mentality that you need to have."

When you come right down to it, UConn took Tennessee's best shot -- effectively without the best player in the country, Svetlana Abrosimova -- and still made all the big plays it had to to prevail.

UConn allowed Tennessee a staggering 20 offensive rebounds, but when big rebounds had to be made, UConn came up with them.

Tennessee played closer to its A-game thanUConn did, but the Huskies are now 9-0 and headed toward that guaranteed national championship that coach Geno Auriemma made last April.

Do you think Auriemma would have put his pompadour on the line by promising a championship if he didn't feel he had the best team, decidedly so? Marciella Auriemma didn't raise no foolish son.

"Yeah, I kind of feel we took their best shot," said Auriemma, chewing on the question. "And we won the game anyway, so that's a great feeling to know that you can do that. At the same time, I worry they took one of our best shots and came right back like we didn't hit them."

Dailey agreed with the boss man, saying, "Without our best player not being at full strength, sure we're very happy to beat Tennessee. They're a very difficult team to beat, but we had other people step up, which will help us down the line."

Not only was Saturday's win accomplished with Abrosimova playing only 11 half-speed minutes (four points, all from the free throw line) with an ailing back, but UConn's Swin Cash and Asjha Jones had minutes reduced by foul trouble. And center Kelly Schumacher -- who had nine blocked shots against Tennessee in the championship game last spring, played just 4 minutes on a still sore right foot.

If anything, UConn will probably benefit from its first close game of the year, if only to allow Auriemma to convince his team it's not as good as it thinks it is.

It is ... but he'll never let his team believe that. Had the Huskies beaten Tennessee by 25, it would have been far more difficult to get their full, undivided attention with more than two months to go before the NCAA tournament.

"Maybe we got up by 17 and instead of keeping that fire, we took a little breather," said UConn senior Shea Ralph, who made seven of nine shots to share the scoring lead with 15 points. "Winning a close game definitely helps us. Who says we're going to win every game by 40? I mean, we are good, but there are a lot of good teams."

Great might be the adjective that replaces good soon because this could be UConn's best team -- and has an opportunity to prove itself the best team in the history of women's college basketball. At 9-0, only two things can stop the Huskies from historic greatness -- injuries and themselves.

Ralph said she doesn't thinkabout the team in terms of historic greatness -- except when Auriemma brings it up in his sarcastic, teaching way.

"If coach is mad at us, he'll say it in his own way," said Ralph. "You know, you guys are supposed to be the best team ever ... oh really? How are you going to do this? How are you going to do that? You know how he is."

Just coach being coach -- sitting on the best team in the country by a sizable margin, and making sure it stays that way.

Dave Solomon is the New Haven Register's sports columnist. Readers may write to him at 40 Sargent Drive, New Haven 06511.